A wide variety of home appliances can fail without warning, and when they do, consumers are often left without suitable alternatives or contingency plans. For example, sump pumps are often the only line of defense for homeowners against flooding and are relied on to protect homes from tens of thousands of dollars in flood damage. Such pumps frequently fail without any perceivable warning, preventing homeowners from taking appropriate preventative action before failure.
In many homes with basements and high water tables, sump pumps are used to actively pump water out of the ground under the home or from the walls surrounding the home and push it to safe drainage systems. Sump pumps range in price from several hundred to several thousand dollars, and often owners buy two so as to have a backup. One reason that homeowners are so willing to pay excessive fees for pumps is that such pumps often fail and when they fail they typically do so without warning and catastrophically.
A malfunctioning sump pump can allow a basement to flood, costing tens of thousands of dollars, and such flooding is often not covered by standard flood insurance policies. There is a need for analytical systems and platforms that can provide insight into these product failures, potentially prevent such failures, and allow users to replace or repair systems (or remove system obstructions) before they fail.
Users of such a platform would enjoy peace of mind knowing that their pump was functioning correctly. Such a platform could further prevent catastrophic failures, extending the life of an average sump pump.
While some modern sump pumps can connect to the internet to alert users to a pump state, these platforms are expensive and cannot be retrofitted to existing sump pumps. They are also typically limited as to what states they can identify.
Homeowners familiar with the risk have to frequently check their sump pumps, install flood sensors, and maintain the system. For those with second homes, floods can occur at any time without visibility, limiting a homeowner's peace of mind. The willingness of such homeowners to purchase backup sump pumps, backup batteries, leak/flood water sensor alarms, and high end pump systems all offer an insight into the need for an inexpensive system and platform that can be retrofitted to an existing sump pump.